End in the end
by Lakritzwolf
Summary: OneShot shortstory: What happened after BroodWar? I was musing, and this came out. Not nice, though. Characterdeath involved.


Disclaimer: All characters, worlds and races due to Blizzard.

I was sitting and wondering: What could have happened after BroodWar? But beware, it's not nice. I was in A Mood.  
Featuring Sarah, Jim, a wreckage of hearts and souls and characterdeath.  
You have been warned.  
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"Oh god, Sarah, what have you done?"

Jim felt like he was about to heave, but a strange numbness had spread inside him, making him feel cold and lifeless.  
As he looked at her, he felt like he should have known all along that it couldn't have worked. It would probably have been to nice, too happy an ending for a story in a world that was anything, but surely not nice at all.

He had sworn to kill her, but yet, when he had finally made her out, aided by the protoss, he couldn't do it.  
Facing her, the monster she had become, he still remembered the woman she used to be, and he couldn't do it. So they had taken her away, and here, among the ruins of the protoss city of Scion, they had tried to undo what the Overmind had done to her.

He had watched, unable to leave her side. The protoss had incredibly advanced medicine technologies, and although they had been developed for their own kind, it took them only a little adjusting to use them on a human. Or better, what once had been a human.

They had amputated her claws first, and done with reconstuctive surgery the best they could. But getting her DNA transformed back again was another matter entirely. They had needed a sample, and Jim had remembered that he, after what had happened in New Gettysburg, had wandered around the ship of Mengsk for hours, steaming with fury, before he had finally stumbled into the corridor where Kerrigan's quarter had been.

He had gone in there, for the simple fact that he had wanted a little something to remember her by. So he had had a look around in her belongings, but what he had taken in the end were a couple of hairs from her brush and her diary. An old-fashioned thing, made from paper, written in pencil.  
Feeling a little like an intruder into her soul, he still read what she had written down, and then, finally, he had wept as he had come to the passages where he had been mentioned.

_"He seems to be a nice guy, although like any guy, his first thoughts as he saw me were not about me as a professional. Sometimes I really wish I couldn't look into people's head like this. It would've been nice not to know what he thinks about me. It's flattering, though, what he thinks. Maybe I can forget now and then that I can read his thoughts. But even though, the things he sometimes think make me wish we could just do what he thinks about."_

They had never done. They had shared the one or another cup of coffe in the cantina, even in her or his quarters, but nothing had ever happened. He had kept the little book, and had stored the hairs within it.

And as if it had been fate, the hairs now had been what the protoss were able to use to restore her DNA. What they had not been able to restore, however, was her mind.

As she woke up the first time after her re-transformation, she had screamed without end, straining to break the straps that held her down, and had only stopped when the protoss at her side had pumped her so full of sedativa that she had been all but knocked out.

Another protoss, a woman, had tried to heal her mind, somehow. But she had not really suceeded. As Sarah had woken up the second time, Jim had been at her side, and she had opened her eyes and looked at him. As she had recognised him, she had burst into tears, and he had taken her in his arms.  
"I've killed them all", she had said, and had cried herself senseless in his arms.

Jim and the protoss around her had tried to calm her, and had told her that it had not been her fault, that she had been twisted and mutilated beyond her will and could not have helped it.  
She had calmed down at that, and he had left her then to rest under the care of the protoss in the sickbay. With nothing else to do but wait, he had turned back on a habit from older, happier times.

He had in his possession a weapon, an old one, an antique Desert Eagle, originating from the human homeworld Terra. He had never been there, and he had spent a fortune in gambling, risking his neck in getting the cash to get hold of the weapon as he had first seen it.

Sitting under the strange-coloured sun of Aiur, he took the weapon to his hands, ran them over the smooth surface of silvery metal and took it apart, cleaning and oiling the gun and then put it together again. Nobody could build something as beautiful as this any more today.

Yet he knew he would have gladly trampled the thing into shards with his own feet if it would have given him Sarah back.

As he had been allowed to see her again, she seemed well recovered and rested, although still a little weak, but she had given him a smile. She then had come with Jim into his tent, stricken up somewhere at the edge of what was left of Scion. He had tried to comfort her, and finally, they had ended up making love.

It should have made him glad, Jim knew. Yet, it somehow had made him only feel more and more sad. It was not how he had ever wished it to be. She had fallen asleep in his arms, and he had wept again then, cursing the world, the universe and all that was in it for the fate they had burdened up on her.  
But eventually, he had fallen asleep.

And he had awoken to a sound that could only have been the shot of a gun. Sitting bolt upright, he realised that Sarah was not beside him any more and felt his stomach clench as he realised what that must mean. Not bothering with putting on more than his pants, he went outside on weak legs and trembling knees.

As he was know kneeling beside her corpse, he felt the unfairness of it all hit him like a club and he threw back his head to scream out his fury and desperation at the world.

It didn't help, and he sagged, feeling again his vision blurr as tears ran down his face.

"Oh god, Sarah, what have you done?"

She had obviously put the gun into her mouth before pulling the trigger, as to make sure there would not be any chance whatsoever to revive her again. There was not much left of her head.

"Darling, I can't even kiss you farewell now..."

He took the gun from her unresisting hands and stared up into the white, huge sun of Aiur.

He was alone, but after having a companion again, even if it had been for one night only, he felt more lonely than he had ever been before. He had known, of course, that going with the protoss meant he would never see a human being again, but now, after having seen one again, he felt his loneliness wash over him like a wave. As friendly and well meaning as the protoss were, they were not only strange, but alien, and they could be his allies, but they could not be his friends.

He was alone. Above him were the stars, the endless universe, and he was alone. Utterly and completely alone. The cool metal of the Desert eagle touched his temple as he entwined his fingers with Sarah Kerrigan's.

He didn't hear the blow.


End file.
